Practice Tips

“Here’s a blog post I published a couple of years ago. I’m putting it up again as a reminder to my students on how to use practice time efficiently”

It's Sunday evening and ahead of a new week full of delicious music, here are some basic tips for good practice aimed at my students, as well as being a useful reminder to myself!   These are just suggestions.  There is no one correct way to practice, no guaranteed winning formula.  You need to find what works for you.

1. Decide what you need to practice and why. Put pen to paper. Define the problem, work out why it's difficult and come up with good ways of practicing

2. Take 3 minutes to think about what you're going to practice and what you want to accomplish

3. Plan the amount of time you need to spend on each piece. Get a notebook and make a timetable if it helps

4. Repeat, repeat, repeat! Having played a passage correctly after playing it several times with flaws, you need to practice it correctly more times

5. Practice fast as well as slow

6. Avoid overwhelm by separating problems and solving them one by one. Break a passage down into sections

7. Practice difficult passages in context

8. Practice away from the harp. This one is really important and very revealing

9. Don't neglect so called easy sections

10. Set yourself achievable goals - memorise one or two lines, then gradually the whole piece

Practice techniques and tools:

Always learn your notes with hands separately first, and aim for fluency before putting hands together.  Building a piece of music is like baking a cake - sometimes, all it needs is a pinch of something!

Break down the individual voicings - listen to the melody, bass line and harmony separately,

Analyse - know and understand the key signature, time signature and rhythm, musical structure, harmonic sequences, modulation - understand what you're playing and if you don't, ask me!

With a difficult passage, get playful!  Practice jumps, practice rhythmical patterns (groups of 2-7 notes in rapid succession in passage work), repeat each note twice then alternate hands, memorise your left hand...

Make friends with your metronome (I know many of you don't like it but it really does work or I wouldn't go on about it...) and make it a game - start low and slow, get comfortable, then take it up 2 notches.  Play it through without stopping, then take it down one notch and work on any problem areas.  Continue this process until you've gone a couple of notches past your ideal tempo.

Research - find out about the composer, look up any unfamiliar printed markings, be inquisitive.

When a piece is more familiar, get your blindfold on while you practice.  I'm serious!  Try it!

After an intense practice session, bash through your piece at top speed.  This can help dust off the cobwebs and get rid of frustration.  Then calm your fingers by playing through it slowly.

Remember you're in charge of your practice.  What you learn in your lesson is the tip of the iceberg that needs to grow after your lesson.

Happy practicing!

Interpretation and expression

Familiar

One of Britten’s characteristic markings. It made me laugh when I once found a Britten harp part where the bracketed Italian words had been replaced with the words “Aren’t they all?!”

At the beginning of this week I received the harp part for a work I’m performing next month, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. It’s a renowned choral orchestral piece and I’ve never learnt it. It’s completely unfamiliar. I’ve never even heard it performed. It got me thinking that this would be the ideal opportunity to share some insights from my learning process.

After leaving the music to ripen further in the envelope for 2 days as I didn’t have time to start looking at it, out came those notes enshrined in mystery yesterday morning. I’ve worked on quite a few of Britten’s harp parts and they are at times fiendishly difficult. His harp writing was strongly influenced by his friendship with male Welsh harpist Osian Ellis who was I suppose Britten’s harp muse. Ellis was a technical whizz in his heyday and this is obvious when you study Britten’s often complex writing.

I scanned through the music yesterday morning and was relieved to find that nothing made me wish I’d received the part sooner. Time will tell. This evening I started looking in more detail and seeing patterns in his writing. I recognised the meticulously precise indications and articulations specific to his style.

My next step will be to go through the part very slowly exploring each element and making sense of them. Much of my work will be done away from the harp with little playing. If I do play sections, they won’t sound great, much like a first draft or a sketch. I rarely like to listen to a new piece before I investigate it myself, mainly out of curiosity to see how near or far from the mark I get to the general interpretation. I will then research the piece and work out the roles of the harp within the orchestral texture. After I become quite familiar with it I’ll start listening to it, both with and without the printed music. With 3 busy weeks to learn it, time is of the essence and I’m trying to cut myself a little slack. It probably won’t be perfect this time. Marking up is a long and vital part of the process, and I’m often adjusting and making corrections a few days before a performance and, best of all, afterwards if there’s a repeat performance. Then I can go to a deeper level. There is only one performance this time, so hopefully I will have the opportunity to do it again. It’s a lot of work, which I enjoy immensely.

There’s an arid coldness to some of Britten’s writing and I often find his music can seem quite angular, stark and impenetrable at first, and by the same token there is so much beauty, such warmth and spine tingling emotion. His violin concerto is a scorcher, his operas masterpieces. One of my all time favourite Britten works is the Lute Song from Gloriana, so simply stunning I’ve added this sound clip.

The fact he almost always writes for the harp in his works means Britten is a force to be reckoned with and the challenge of learning one of his pieces is an opportunity for enrichment.

Draft pedalling

This will need work to make it work

I digress. Great pedalling is an art form and it’s very important to find a system that works. If you’re a non musician or lever harpist, the harp has 7 pedals, one for each note, with 3 positions - flats are at the top, naturals in the middle, and pressing the pedal right down sharpens the note. Accidentals (flats, naturals and sharps) basically make the note sound higher or lower. Looking at my feet, the pedals are in this order: D, C, B / E, F, G, A. I’m a left foot over right foot kind of girl. This means I write my pedals with D, C, B on top. There’s no right or wrong here but consistency is key.

Brownie points

if you can tell me why I need to edit this page

Choosing a good fingering can only really be done at the harp so that you can hear the results. To some extent, you can do this away from the instrument but you have to hear and feel the result and like pedalling, the fingering I choose might not work for another harpist. I think it’s down to morphology and how my brain functions as well as technical ability. I know some harpists would laugh at my imaginative fingerings but if they work for me and the music, it doesn’t matter. I try to choose my fingering according to the articulation and the musical intention and Britten is very precise in his demands. The small arrows in the passage above mean staccatissimo, very very short, and ppp means pianississimo - very very quiet, so this can be quite tricky especially if it’s fast. Articulation is like talking. Imagine someone talking in a monotone way, you soon stop listening. It’s the same with music.

Analysis is essential in understanding the piece, so this means working on key signatures, time signatures, harmonic progressions, basic structure and so on. It’s like baking a cake - knowing and understanding the ingredients you’re putting in. It’s way less boring than it sounds - it can be a vividly colourful discovery.

Visual memory is so important. I feel reassured if I can see the pages in my mind away from the harp and the more detail the better. Learning a new piece is like putting information into a computer. Input it any old how and any old how is what you get out. This doesn’t stop me from making it a fun, indulgent, imaginative and creative learning experience. This may seem silly but listening is important! Sometimes I’m so busy with one particular aspect of the music that I feel daft when I realise I’ve stopped listening. I pay attention to the various voicings in each hand. Germaine, my teacher in France taught me this, to define each line within a chordal left hand part for example, to connect the notes and hear and SING the individual lines. I can still play many of the pieces I learnt with her mostly from memory. This brings me to muscle memory, a vital element in practice and performance. What I mean is feeling the gaps between the fingers (inversions), the jumps, left and right hand coordination, how to remember the music by encouraging the body to FEEL it. It is physical and emotional work. And it’s as much fun as I make it.

The metronome soon becomes my close ally again and sets me on the right track. Slowly but surely I will get there and my aim is to feel as though the music belongs to me, that I know it intimately. I often get discouraged during the learning process - this is normal and I know I just have to keep going, or take a break and let the music in. When I feel like this, I remind myself to focus on how I want to feel in the rehearsal and concert, to focus on the music and the performance. Visualisation and meditation are really useful here. I’ve suffered from performance anxiety in the past, and sometimes I still do. It passes as soon as I get into the music. I’ve learnt to manage it and it isn’t destructive anymore. It helps if I have practiced well and offered myself plenty of anchors in my preparation to keep me from going adrift.

Time for some practice. Not on the piano.

Practice Tips

It's Monday morning and as befits a new week, here are some basic tips for good practice aimed at my students, as well as being a useful reminder to myself!   These are just suggestions.  There is no one correct way to practice, no guaranteed winning formula.  You need to find what works for you.

1. Decide what you need to practice and why.  Put pen to paper.  Define the problem, work out why it's difficult and come up with good ways of practicing
2. Take 3 minutes to think about what you're going to practice and what you want to accomplish
3. Plan the amount of time you need to spend on each piece.  Get a notebook and make a timetable if it helps
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat!  Having played a passage correctly after playing it several times with flaws, you need to practice it correctly more times
5. Practice fast as well as slow
6. Avoid overwhelm by separating problems and solving them one by one.  Break a passage down into sections
7. Practice difficult passages in context
8. Practice away from the harp.  This one is really important and very revealing
9. Don't neglect so called easy sections
10. Set yourself achievable goals - memorise one or two lines, then gradually the whole piece

Practice techniques and tools:

Always learn your notes with hands separately first, and aim for fluency before putting hands together.  Building a piece of music is like laying the foundations of a house.

Break down the individual voicings - listen to the melody, bass line and harmony separately,

Analyse - know and understand the key signature, time signature and rhythm, musical structure, harmonic sequences, modulation - understand what you're playing and if you don't, ask me!

With a difficult passage, get playful!  Practice jumps, practice rhythmical patterns (groups of 2-7 notes in rapid succession in passage work), repeat each note twice then alternate hands, memorise your left hand...

Make friends with your metronome (I know many of you don't like it but it really does work or I wouldn't go on about it...) and make it a game - start low and slow, get comfortable, then take it up 2 notches.  Play it through without stopping, then take it down one notch and work on any problem areas.  Continue this process until you've gone a couple of notches past your ideal tempo.

Research - find out about the composer, look up any unfamiliar printed markings, be inquisitive.

When a piece is more familiar, get your blindfold on while you practice.  I'm serious!  Try it!

After an intense practice session, bash through your piece at top speed.  This can help dust off the cobwebs and get rid of frustration.  Then calm your fingers by playing through it slowly.

Remember you're in charge of your practice.  What you learn in your lesson is the tip of the iceberg that needs to grow after your lesson.

Happy practicing!

Intention

This is the word that sprang to mind yesterday morning as I drove over to Saltaire, and as soon as I got there I inked it onto my hand so it was in my awareness all day.  I wanted to ensure that my students were moving on and I was thinking of ways in which I could help with this.  As I walked to the shop, I started thinking of the pedal harp and that it might be time for someone to give it a try.  My first student arrived and immediately 'fessed up to not having practiced much for the very valid reason of being away for her 50th birthday in a suitably exciting tropical destination as well as organising her celebration this weekend.  She was in need of some inspiration and wondered about trying the pedal harp.  Bear in mind this is without me mentioning my earlier thoughts.  I wheeled in the stunning ebony model as I pondered the potential of my psychic powers.  She took to it like a duck to water, immediately realising the benefit of using pedals over levers in her preferred classical and romantic repertoire, not to mention the postural comfort.  We'll see what happens, it's a massive investment and in my opinion quite a nice 50th gift to oneself.  She could also hire a pedal harp for a few months just to see.

My students came and went and I felt privileged as they shared their joys and woes with me, and I tentatively shared a few of mine.  Time flew and although I had a full six hours teaching, I felt energised afterwards.  I was very much in the moment for most of the day with very little drifting.  I wasn't worried about needing to practice when I got home and I know from experience that it's futile after a full day.  I met up with a good friend briefly in my scant 30 minute break and as we sought to sate our caffeine craving to no avail, I think an express espresso pop-up on Saltaire's main drag would be a stroke of genius. Copyright Rhian Evans.

I felt a bit awkward directing my students to my website and this blog but I realised that this is a great way for me to share my knowledge of the harp and music and some tips on practising and approach in one place.  Not everyone is on Facebook!  I recently went through lots of old papers in my decluttering and found some pearls of wisdom from my undergraduate years that are valid to this day.  I also did something I haven't done for a long time.  As my welcome home cuppa brewed, I went to my music library and got out some new old pieces that came up during the day.  There's a sense of potential in the air.

In setting myself up for meditation yesterday morning, I realised with mild horror that I forgot to meditate yesterday.  Gone was my 177 day streak!  My playful innate competitiveness is still there but much tamer these days.  Somewhat ironically my meditation is on regret.  That tickled me afterwards.

On Thursday evening I received a last minute enquiry for a job tomorrow.  It was taken almost immediately.  I then got a call and an email yesterday afternoon saying that it was available again and then it got filled, again.  Just missed - twice!  I'm ok about it all.  I'm becoming quite Zen in my maturity, I'm just meant to be somewhere else tomorrow...

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Harp Lessons in Saltaire

Salts Mill

Once a month I teach at the Early Music Shop in the beautiful historic setting of the Salts Mill in Saltaire near Bradford.  I love going there and the golden stones of the buildings that have earned it the status of World Heritage Site feel warm and sunny even on chillier days.  

My students are all adults and they are totally passionate about the harp and music which make it a joy to go there. They always arrive eager and well prepared (I know immediately if they haven't had time to practice - they usually tell me) and they have a host of questions.  I love how engaged they are in the learning process which in turn inspires and informs my practice.  Each student is very different and I enjoy coming up with ideas for explaining techniques and approaches which will hopefully provoke that lightbulb moment!  Adult teaching is very pleasurable and rewarding - my students play purely for enjoyment, so there's no pressure around exams and performances.  When I teach I hear things I take for granted with fresh ears and I'm often inspired by their choice of repertoire.  I rarely have to come up with ideas for new pieces as they have the curiosity to seek out and research what they would like to learn.  Teaching brings its frustrations of course, and something that seems so obvious to me makes no sense at all to a student!   My challenge is to clarify and make that information digestible so that they can practice it at home so it becomes second nature.  That's the most important part - the homework - if I'm not careful they can easily practice incorrectly, and as there are long gaps between lessons, my explanation is really important as is the correct practical execution by the student.  An hour passes very quickly!  One of the difficulties adults face is they have almost too much understanding and awareness.  That means they question and analyse which can over complicate matters, whereas a child would simply replicate or follow orders.  My current students have been coming for at least two years and I like to think I know more or less how they tick by now.  Another high point for me is the conversation and I look forward to hearing what they've been up to away from the harp.

The harp lessons in Saltaire were instigated in 2011 by Louise Thomson whose role I gradually took up when she went on maternity leave.  My colleague Alice Kirwan and I aim to develop and streamline our teaching there and we hope to incorporate a group session at least twice a year.  Not only is this important on a social level, but it's also very helpful to watch and listen to other harpists, which remains one of the best ways to learn. 

Alice and I

Playing the harp is serious business

Under the imaginative and sensitive leadership of experienced Artistic Director Eira Lynn Jones, I have enjoyed being a member of the artistic team responsible for organising the annual Saltaire Camac Harp Weekend for the past few years within the context of the Saltaire Festival.  We have welcomed exciting guest artists such as Tristan Le Govic and Nikolaz Cadoret from France who have inspired and encouraged our students and given them a different and fresh approach to their harp playing.

If you would like to book a trial lesson, please contact the Early Music Shop on 01274 288100 and if you are on Facebook, please like and follow our teacher page, Harp Tuition at Early Music Shop, Saltaire    https://www.facebook.com/Harp.EMS/

Tower

Saltaire

Tower

Saltaire

That Friday feeling...

As I sit here typing before I head off to Saltaire to teach, I'm not feeling so great.  It's been a very busy week and last night I came down with a sore throat.  It just seemed odd to me to have one at this time year when the weather's been so exceptionally kind and so I looked back over my week.  I cut out bread from my diet and I'm convinced that's a factor.  I also wondered about stopping smoking, 6 months on by now - is my body still detoxing from all those years poisoning it?  I'm about to meditate and that always helps me get in a better frame of mind - I don't like feeling grumpy when I teach.  I don't mind it when I'm on my own, nobody experiences the backlash of my low mood!  Since I started blogging I've noticed the therapeutic and cathartic benefits of using the written/typed word to express myself - GET OUT MY BODY WHATEVER YOU ARE!!!

Evening: during the drive I reviewed my week and having researched my flu-like symptoms, I asked myself what I'd changed.  Since Monday I haven't eaten bread or sugar.  Yesterday late morning I felt a huge dip in mood and energy and slept for almost 3 hours!!!  My glands are right up and it feels like flu but it isn't, it's definitely food related.  I have felt paranoid and depressed and incapable of making my thoughts coherent for any length of time.  I should have been in bed but as the lessons are monthly I would have felt I was letting my students down.  My motivation was selfish - as well as getting paid to do what I love, I really like my students and they cheer me up!  I felt bad but I explained my situation and thankfully they were understanding.  I hadn't realised how dependent I had become on sugar since I stopped drinking.  The worst was straight after lunch, I would immediately crave biscuits after my healthy salad and slice of toast with bits, and I got a bit of biscuit habit.  Biscuits or sugary chocolate with a low cocoa percentage.  In my quest for perfection it became those brick like Italian almond biscotti and last week and the week before it was home baked cake in an attempt to feel virtuous.  On my drive from Scotland I had a few grapes for breakfast, then at Tebay I couldn't resist buying sugary treats and came away with a brownie AND a delightful lemon and blueberry concoction!  And a flat white to wash it all down.  It dawned on me I was falling into the trap my coach had warned me of - replacing one addiction with another!  As I go cold turkey YET AGAIN I'm quite gobsmacked at the hold sugar had over me.  It's far more potent than alcohol and cigarettes, on a level with class A drugs.  Not that I would know.  I'm feeling quite rough tonight and my muscles and joints are sore - do I have to keep doing this to myself?  In so many ways it's easier to kick 2 habits at once and feel twice as bad...  I don't miss the euphoric hit as I remember all too vividly the brain fog and lethargy that followed a binge.  As I head into the bank holiday I know it's going to involve exhausting obsessive research into better dietary habits...  I thought again about that Hugh F W programme I watched and felt a lot of anger at our obsessive consumerism that is basically fuelled by commercialism, all the bottomless sugary drinks for kids and hidden sugars in our food, not to mention those irresistible special offers.  2 for £3?  Yes please!!!  I for one am not falling for it anymore!!!

Back to teaching.  As rather an independent woman I don't like asking for help and I SO wish I could do everything myself!  I always read reviews if I'm going to use someone's services and with this in mind, and since it's good to update reviews on a regular basis, I asked the lovely Libby if she would do the honours, which she did most readily and generously.  I couldn't make head nor tail of the quirky message in her beautiful handmade card this afternoon but now I do - thanks Lib!!!  I think she gets me and my teaching!  She's a die hard devoted harp lover, practices so faithfully and never ever gives up, my kind of student!!!

My beautiful cross stitch red dragon!

Significant choice of brand - let's hope it works

Virtuous new purchase.  Has she drunk out of it?  Not to my knowledge...

A forest of harps in Saltaire

Wholesome breakfast and snacks.  Wish they were all the same jars though, I love a bit of symmetry!